RESIDUAL
PUBLIC RECORD
A monument built to feel neutral and timeless now carries fresh spray paint: FIGHT FASCISM. Residual freezes the collision between official history and lived reality.
The Monument and the Message
A monument that was built to feel neutral and timeless now carries fresh spray paint: FIGHT FASCISM. Residual freezes that collision of official history and lived reality.
I was just walking through Logan Square when I saw it. A historic monument, and across the stone someone had sprayed FIGHT FASCISM in big letters. In front of it, a guy is chillin next to his bike, sippin a beer like it’s any other day. No crowd, no protest signs, no cops, no speeches. Just three things in the frame: the monument, the words, the man.
Nothing about it was staged. I didn’t ask him to move, didn’t ask him to pose. I just clocked how everything lined up in that one moment: heavy stone meant to last forever, fresh paint that could be gone tomorrow, and a regular person sitting in the middle of that tension. I knew if I hesitated, I’d miss it, so I made the frame and kept moving.
Later, when I sat with the photo, it hit me different. It wasn’t just a strong street shot. I kept coming back to how much courage it took for someone to tag those words on that specific monument, and how the guy on the bike felt like the rest of us — trying to live a normal life inside all this political noise and pressure. That’s when I realized this image deserved to live as a print, not just as a file buried on a hard drive.
When I look at this photograph now, I see three different kinds of power in one frame.
The monument is slow, institutional power. It’s the kind of thing cities build to feel permanent and neutral, even though nothing about the systems behind it is actually neutral. The graffiti is raw and fast: someone took a risk to say what they felt directly on top of that symbol. And the man on the bike is everyday power — the kind of quiet resilience it takes to move through your day while this stuff is happening around you.
For me, the photo says resistance isn’t always loud or organized. It can be anonymous. It can happen in the middle of a regular afternoon. It can be one person leaving a mark and another person just existing in the same space, absorbing it. I’m not trying to tell anyone who to vote for or what side they have to be on. I’m showing that someone, at some point, cared enough and was angry enough to write those words on a monument meant to outlive them.
Printing this on baryta turns it into more than a social media moment. A feed will bury it. Paper won’t. To me, this print is proof that courage and frustration and hope still show up in physical space, not just in comments and reposts.
Around the Monument
The Echo
FIRST DAY is the shout. RESIDUAL is what’s still sitting in the neighborhood years later. Different days. Different corners of the city. Same undercurrent.
RESIDUAL is printed on Moab Juniper Baryta Rag — a fiber-based baryta paper with a warm white base and exceptional tonal depth for black and white printing. Signed by the artist. Certificate of authenticity included with every print. Available in open editions and a limited collector edition.
FIRST DAY is the shout. Downtown Chicago turned into one moving body. A quarter million people in the street, wall to wall, saying out loud, “we’re not okay with this.”
RESIDUAL is the echo. Years later, the crowds are gone, but the tension is still there, sitting in the neighborhood with you. Different days. Different corners of the city. Same undercurrent: people refusing to be quiet about what’s happening around them.
Prints start at $100. Open editions in 8.5 × 11, 11 × 14, and 13 × 19. Collector editions in 17 × 22 (limited to 15) and 24 × 36 (limited to 7), individually numbered. Printed in Chicago.